ivy creeping up the trellis
by likeglory
Summary: You do not like Grant Ward. (But you are a liar.)


**A/N:** originally posted on ao3. thank you Heaven for being my beta reader.

* * *

><p>You do not like Grant Ward.<p>

You are warm where he is calculating, a scientist where he is a warrior, a clean slate where his is splattered in the blood of those you know he's killed, even though no one ever says anything about it

He is an unfamiliar and uncharted land that you do not want to venture on—

* * *

><p>As the days either drag or fly by, with harrowing adventures that make your blood sing and make Fitz's eyes light up, you discover that Grant Ward is lethal. He is lethal, he is dangerous, and he is a killer—but he jumped out of a plane to save your life. Your hands still shake even when he tells you that you're going to be fine when he's leading the way to Coulson's office.<p>

After you press a kiss to Fitz's cheek and leave him in his room, you nearly collide with him in the hall. He is swallowed up by the darkness and all you can see is his outline in the shadows. Your veins still buzz with the leftover adrenaline from stepping off the Bus, but your heart's in your throat again when you look up at him, because—

The darkness suits him. On him, it's a second skin, and for a split second, you wonder if he _wanted_ to save you, or if it was _expected_ of him—if it was an _order_—

* * *

><p>Weeks pass, and slowly, you become comfortable with his steely gaze, the harshness in his eyes when he's not looking anyone in the eye. You become comfortable with stitching him back together after some near-disaster, but your heartbeat still speeds up when your fingertips glide along the cut that begins at the base of his throat and ends at his bottom-left rib. You slide your fingers along the stiches he's sat clear-eyed and unmoving through for the last half-hour.<p>

His eyes suddenly flit to yours, and you freeze for just a second—just a second—but it's enough, because then then you're muttering something about _you can't move for a week_ and _get lots of rest_ and you're doing everything you can to keep your hands busy and your back to him.

Your heart is so loud and so _fast_, pounding away in your chest. You feel the telltale buzzing in your fingertip. You_ remember_ every graze of his arm against yours and you _remember_ jumping out of that plane—for Skye, for Coulson, for _Fitz_, and—

You remember wondering if he _wanted_ to jump out of that plane to save you so your _life_ could be saved, and then Ward speaks. He's saying your name, like it's a question.

You've been silent for almost a minute, and the rhythm of your heartbeat has turned erratic and unnatural.

It's unusual, because it feels like there's something, something tugging on your heartstrings, and it hurts—it actually _hurts_—

* * *

><p>Skye nearly dies. In the end, she's saved, and you can't help notice the way Ward stands outside the lab, eyes on the woman in the bed, recovering, resting, <em>alive<em>.

You understand, but your heart does not. Besides the relief making you giddy, the relief that has Fitz dozing at his desk, face hidden in the crook of his elbow, there's a twitch, deep inside, as you watch him, simply watch him from where you stand in your lab coat with your shaking hands and your inability to _breathe_ right because—

* * *

><p>Grant Ward is wrapped around your heart like a vine. He is ivy that has twisted its way around each of your ribs like they're a trellis and it's slowly choking the life out of the organ that keeps the blood flowing in your body. Grant Ward is <em>cold<em>, he's calculating, he's everything you're glad you're not. You look at him, and you try to think, _specialist, strong, equipped, trained, prepared, killer_—

Yet you want to reach out to him when he passes you by on the Bus. Especially when he took Fitz away on that mission, the one nobody could tell you about. You wanted to reach out and say _be careful_, but you knew better than that. Instead, you did what both brain and your heart _wanted_ you to do: you held Fitz tight before you left and sat in the lab for hours after, unable and able to focus on anything and everything at once.

It's like he's an army, an army built as one man, and you are a civilian. A brilliant one, who's saved her teammates' lives, but someone without training, without the proper skills to succeed where he excels, where he leaves you staring after him, your fingers curling into frustrated fists after he's gone.

You do not like Grant Ward. You—

* * *

><p>(You are a liar.)<p>

* * *

><p>When you find out Ward is HYDRA, when you find out that the man who has saved your life is <em>evil<em>—evil, evil, evil—something cracks inside of you. Something breaks, and the first thing you want to do is cry. You want to cry, you want to stab him with a syringe and you want this—this _thing_, with HYDRA—to be over. You wish it never happened. But it has, it _is __happening_, and—

You vow to crush your heart when he drops you and Fitz out of the bus, into the ocean.

You—

* * *

><p>You kiss Fitz everywhere when he's got the words out of his mouth—<em>you're more than that, Jemma<em>—because there's a rush inside you. The vine around your heart is dying as you press your lips to Fitz's temple, his nose, his forehead, his cheeks, his chin, his upper lip, but your heart is screaming at you because he's going to _save_ you and you're so _angry_ but you have Fitz, you have Fitz—

You do what Grant Ward would not. You swim to the surface, dragging Fitz ninety feet through the ocean blue, all the way up.

You can't breathe, even when you surface for air, even when Fitz's head is above water. You can't breathe until Director Fury has you both on the helicopter, and you can find Fitz's pulse.

Relief runs through you like water does over rocks, but you're still angry, so _angry_—

* * *

><p>They bring Ward in, and the first thing you want to do is hit him with everything you are for everything he's ever done. But instead, Skye strikes him across the face with one of the mercenary's guns, her face a mask of <em>fury<em>, that mirrors you, mirrors what you're _all_ feeling.

You watch him go down into the basement, wondering if it's any use—any use at all to use him when everyone's so _angry_. Some people couldn't even look at him when he was marched down the hall, towards his cell doors—

But then May tells you that you're going to start basic training—training so you can be an agent in the field, because there's only a few sleeper agents out there, and they need more people who can get the job done. And it appears that you've been to chosen for a job that calls for specialized training, training that certainly does _not_ remind you of the traitor Grant Ward at all.

Skye even helps out with disarming when you start, because you're so unsteady on your feet and you're still reeling from all that's happened, and you find that, with each passing day, waking up and believing in SHIELD gets harder because someone who saved your life didn't _want_ to save your life, and that same someone is _evil_ and nearly killed you and Fitz. That same someone _hurt_your best friend. That same someone _tried_ to kill you both.

You watch Ward, every night, in the room above his cell. You watch him, and try not to pull your hair out, because you're somewhat numb on the inside, because a lot of this still feels unreal, surreal, like a dream. But your eyes still burn with furious, unshed tears when he looks up at the camera like he can _see_ you running your fingers through your tangled locks—like he can see you pacing back and forth, feeling helpless, so bloody _helpless_—

* * *

><p>Coulson comes to you, some weeks later, and asks if you'd like to go on a mission. He doesn't skirt around it, doesn't sugarcoat it, because he's seen Fitz struggle like they all have, and you're scrabbling—for something, for <em>anything<em> that won't make you feel useless because Grant Ward is stuck in a padded cell, staying silent.

It doesn't matter how many hours you stare at the screen the cameras provide—he does not apologize, he does not move, he does _nothing_ except twiddle his thumbs and wait for Skye.

You are _livid_ on the inside, but you're also crumbling—slowly disintegrating because there's so little you can do here, and Coulson is giving you the opportunity—to let Fitz heal, without you there to hinder him, to get away from the room you've been sitting in since they let you out of the infirmary, and—

So you say yes, and you try not to look back at The Playground over your shoulder as you go, a new identity placed delicately over your features—_HYDRA, not SHIELD, HYDRA, not SHIELD_—but you can't help it—

* * *

><p>As soon as you're around the corner, something squeezes your heart, tightens around it like a rope, a noose—<p>

A twisted _vine_—

* * *

><p>(You want to hate him. You <em>want<em> to, because you _should_, and a part of you does. A part of you would bury him alive if you were given the order to, but it's just a single, small part of you. As a whole, you are conflicted.

You are _not_ supposed to be conflicted.)

* * *

><p>HYDRA is similar to what SHIELD used to be, in its organization, its wholeness, and its resources, but their preference for world domination over ideals of peace and freedom makes your skin crawl.<p>

You do everything you are told to do. You follow the rules to the letter, like you were born to, but, the thing is, you're not playing by SHIELD's rules. You're playing by the enemy's rules—the enemy that Ward sided with—and every time you remember that you have to grit your teeth, hold your breath, and count to ten before you can exhale before you can resume working again.

You never eat at home, and when you do, it's always with a takeout container left on the counter in the kitchen. You don't like your bed, you despise the color of the walls and the way the kitchen is set up, but that's because you've spent months in a place provided by SHILED.

You make it four months until your cover is blown, and then Bobbi Morse gets you out alive, and in one piece. Bobbi is—well, she was terrifying when she was your head of security, but now you think there might be a halo sitting above her head because the woman smiles almost as bright as Skye, and that's saying something, because—

* * *

><p>When you wake up on your first day back on the Playground, the first thing you do is go see Ward.<p>

You don't go down to his cell. Instead, you go and look at him through the camera feed, and find that Skye is already there. You feel a smile tugging at the corners of your mouth when you see her, but when you see that her eyes are on the screen, and her hand keeps edging towards the gun she keeps in its holster on her belt, it fades, and you wonder how much you've missed.

You can barely look Fitz in the eye, and there's some new agents you've never met before—there's only one mercenary left, out of the three you remember being there, and he doesn't like Bobbi, and for that you want to punch him, because _who_ could hate Bobbi? The answer is her ex-husband, and that's crazy, because Bobbi—you think Bobbi is _wonderful_, just like Skye, just like May, just like—

Your heart aches at the sight of Ward inside his cell, motionless on his cot, no matter how much your cheeks burn with the shame of it—no matter how many times you imagine yourself scraping away at the skin covering your chest with your blunt nails until you can find the _thing_ wrapped and knotted around your heart so you can cut it with one of Hunter's knives. You imagine a thorny, poison ivy vine entwined around each rib, dipping towards your tibia, clutching tightly at your collar bone. You imagine his sticky, bloody fingers digging through skin and bone, tearing a hole inside your head—

You and Skye silently marvel at the fact that he knows the time, even when he has no watch, no clock, no daylight—_nothing_ there to tell him. And it truly is something to marvel at. You know no one else who knows exactly what time is it. You know those who have a sense of when breakfast should take place, along with lunch and tea time, but he's something else. It's like he's got a clock on the inside of his skull, placed just above the top of his spine, and—

* * *

><p>You do not speak to Fitz again, once Mack talks to you. His words are like a slap to the face, and you know, you <em>know<em> you had to leave. You left for him, and being here—you know that you shouldn't be, and that he needs time, so much more time.

Your helping has hindered him to the point where Mack looks at you like he wants to evict you from the base, but you're not about to explain yourself any further. You're not about to describe the way your heart nearly beat its way out of your chest and right into Fitz's hands when you moved to kiss every bit of him that you could make out in the dimness of the container at the bottom of the ocean. You're not about to do that to a man you hardly know, even if he has been there for Fitz. Even if he's been there for him when you weren't, when you were _supposed_to be but couldn't because _you_ were the issue, the hindrance, the _problem_—

* * *

><p>You spend more time with Bobbi. You spend your time with Bobbi, and some with Skye, but mostly Bobbi. Bobbi is wonderful. Bobbi does not remind you of Fitz, or Ward, or of betrayal, or of what SHIELD once was.<p>

Bobbi and Skye are lights in the darkness that swallows you up when you go to sleep. They, along with May and Coulson, serve as reminders every time you check on Ward through the security camera feed. They remind you of the part that wants to put him in the ground—the part that wants to hand a gun to May and a shovel to Skye—

You're with Bobbi when Coulson tells you that there's been an attack on the UN, and the first thing you ask is _it wasn't us, was it, sir?_because you're hoping to God that it wasn't one of your own, because if it was, that would mean another wave of hell raining down on your team—a team that's already gone through so much in so little time.

When you find out it's about Ward's brother, you want to ball your hands up into fists, but you also want put a hand on Skye's shoulder and tell her it's going to be okay. Whenever Skye thinks of Ward, she gets this look on her face—it's something like betrayal, coupled with a hurt you think you might know something about, but then it's always, _always_ angry. And you get it, you do, but unlike Skye, your body is a trellis.

Your body is a trellis, and he is the ivy creeping up, up, up—up through the intricate, interwoven patterns that make you who you are, towards the top, where you struggle and scramble for something to burn off the creep, because your heart's been having the life—no, the _fight_—squeezed out of it since _day one_, even though everything is his fault, everything bad that's happened to them, to Fitz, to Skye, everyone—it's all his fault, and you _know_ this, you know it so well. The fury that swells in your chest has you seeing red, and then your eyes burn at the very _thought_—

* * *

><p>You see Ward being led down the hall, and your heart begins beating faster inside your chest.<p>

You stand in front of Skye, when he says her name like she's his sun, moon, and stars upon seeing her outside his padded cell, because you will _not_ allow him to touch her, or Fitz, or anyone, for that matter. You will not let him near the people you love, because he is poison. He's got unusually sharp thorns that she never saw before Skye told the team who he was, who he _really_ was.

You tell him that, if you ever see him again, you'll kill him, with such assertiveness and confidence in your voice that you believe it down to your core. But your heart, it aches, it _aches_, and you'll _remember_, remember the times you spent _waiting_ for him to come back alive, before HYDRA reared its many ugly heads. You remember thinking _I do not like him_ and you will remember the way he looked at you, that one time, when your hand first shook before you began stitching him up back on the Bus, you will _remember_, and it will sting, it will hurt, it will _burn_—

* * *

><p>(The look Ward gives you before he's led around the corner has your confidence trickling down the drain. It's a look that conveys surprise, and you know that he hasn't seen you for <em>months<em>, that you must look so _different_ than before. You have _grown_ and expanded your skillset in fields you never dreamed you'd enter since he dropped you and Fitz into the ocean, since he sent you sinking ninety feet down into a blue abyss that you thought you wouldn't survive.

But you saw the look in his eyes. You saw them, the way they'd narrowed _just so_ before he'd disappeared along with his escort, and—

He knows.

He knows that you are a liar.)


End file.
